Saturday, December 1, 2012

Random Thoughts

What's on my mind today:

--For the first time since we were married, B and I are officially out of debt!! (We both had student loan debt from grad school.) I paid it off last week. We ended up paying around $50,000, including interest (which wasn't that high because they were subsidized loans): a lot of money when you think about it. So happy not to have that hanging over my head anymore!

--This will be R's first real Christmas (since last year she was still a baby and unable to understand anything). I am conflicted about taking her to see Santa, because she will probably be frightened by the idea of sitting on some bearded stranger's lap. Plus we aren't going to "do" Santa (we are atheists, so encouraging quasi religious belief in a mythological character isn't really in line with our belief system). Since I can't explain to her the difference between pretend and real right now, wouldn't encouraging her to get excited about Santa be confusing? On the other hand, I think it would be really cute and want the photo! So I don't know...

--I just finished a book about the importance of empathy. I now see the effects of its lack everywhere I go (at the store, among children, even reading stuff on the Internet). I want to send everyone to empathy school because it's in such short supply. I also feel worried about R: so far she lives in a bubble where everyone loves her and is kind to her. Someday she will have to join the real world and it makes me sad.

--I went to a book warehouse sale today (books are generally really expensive here) and bought a bagful of books on topics like identifying birds of Singapore, the history of banking in Florence, and economic statistics of China (graphs of things like number of coal mining accidents annually). Plus Why Nations Fail. Then I went home and showed them all to B. Instead of being put off and thinking I was a freak (like most people would: I mean, books of industrial production statistics??? WTF?), he was really excited and spent about 30 minutes talking about them with me. I love my husband.

9 comments:

  1. With my kids I neither encourage the belief in things like that nor discourage it. I let them think what they want and if they ask I tell them the truth. I still take them for pictures and if they ask who it is, I tell them it is a man dressed like Santa. In essence I treat it the same way as if they were meeting a person dressed as Dora. They know who the storybook Santa is and because I have not encouraged a belief, they treat it as any other character in a book.

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    1. I think this is a great approach! What a good idea. I will copy you: it makes good sense. Thanks for the advice.

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  2. I really like the approach Anonymous has taken, and that is my plan as well. If we went to Disneyland we wouldn't necessarily be shouting from the rooftops that Mickey Mouse is a fake - somehow kids figure that out on their own. The Santa thing becomes complicated when parents start using him as a bribe and insisting that he is an actual person who watches them and will punish them if they aren't good.

    it must be nice to be in Singapore and not doing Santa. I assume they aren't as literal about it as Americans are? I have to stress about parents hating me if my child "ruins" Christmas by revealing that Santa isn't real. So silly (and annoying).

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    1. You know, I don't know what most people's attitude is about Santa (the topic of "ruining" Christmas hasn't really come up given R can't talk), but I imagine few people actually believe in him (since they are mostly Chinese or Muslim, that would be weird).

      It does seem strange that you are supposed to participate in other people's belief systems though. I mean, if you are Christian you don't expect Jews to pretend like they believe in Jesus: you just explain to your children that your beliefs are not the same. Argues a certain lack of confidence in the parents in my opinion.

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  3. For books, I discovered a very useful recommendation website - goodreads. You can train it to suggest books you would like, and to keep track of ones you've read, book-by-book, or in "bookshelf" groupings.

    For example,

    Why Nations Fail --> The Richer Sex: How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners Is Transforming Sex, Love and Family

    Mother Nature --> The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued AND Birth in Four Cultures: A Crosscultural Investigation of Childbirth in Yucatan, Holland, Sweden, and the United States

    The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution --> Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution AND Making of the English Working Class

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    1. I have an account on Goodreads but found it too troublesome to keep up with (rating/finding all the books took so long). I already keep track of everything I read elsewhere so that aspect wasn't useful. But thanks for the suggestion: maybe I will try again when I have some extra time.

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  4. We will incorporate santa the same way we incoorpoate books about talking dogs and fairytales. I will not be telling G that there is a fat man who comes down the chimney, but he was a real person, so I will tell her (when she's old enough to understand) that the man in the red suit is pretending to be a man from a long time ago who used to deliver small toys to children (or... whatever the story is, I'll do some research. lol).

    Along with not doing Santa comes the fear that G may ruin it for some other kid. I recently had a friend who's daughter learned what sex is from another kid at school. The mother was heartbroken, because she wanted to a) imagine her child would be young for ever and b) be the one to tell her. A similar attitude exists toward Santa, it is a symbol of youth. If G learns about sex before I would've told her - I intend to sit her down and let her know that it is okay to talk with family about it, but that other kids need to learn about it from the adults in their lives. I plan to take a similar approach with Santa Clause. "We know that the people who dress up like Saint Nicklaus are not real, but some children think that man at the mall is really going to be delivering toys. It's fun to play pretend, and that is what their family does at Christmas time." I also feel the same way about focusing on Christ during "Christmas". It is really a Christianized version of the winter solstice celebrations. It is impossible to live in America and not know the story of Christ's births. I would be doing G a disservice by not teaching her about it. It is in the songs and movies of my culture's seasons, but being agnostic I do not intend to make the holiday about that celebration. Instead we will be focusing on the time together as a family, a time for kindness, and a time to learn about other cultures and religions. This is something that has been on my mind a lot lately. In case you can't tell. :)

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    1. Agree with you about teaching R about Jesus' birth. It's especially important to me, because I have a distinct point of view which differs greatly from the mainstream one (since I don't think he was divine, born in a manger, or attended by wise men), and I want to introduce R to my way of thinking early. Love your idea of focusing on the family and kindness aspects.

      I have mixed feelings about the historic St. Nicholas story though, because it's not really suitable for small children (what with the kids being murdered and baked in pies and everything) and its history is at best highly dubious (meaning we would have to get into how one evaluates historic evidence). I think I will probably avoid introducing it until she is older and able to think in a more critical manner.

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  5. empathy....i swear it's a gene that about 80% of this population is missing.

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